


Love is patient, Love is kind

by tetsuskitten



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8666005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetsuskitten/pseuds/tetsuskitten
Summary: Tooru pushes himself to a new limit and when he collapses in on himself, Hajime is there for him.





	

"Sometimes it's painful to be brave  
To look fear in the face and know your name  
To find your strength."

 

Tooru was excellent at maintaining a façade. He was the charming guy girls fell for, he was the guy who brought his team’s best qualities out, he was calculating and yet kind, his smile was ever present and sweet, his eyes didn’t show signs of weakness. His persona was, superficially analyzed, perfect. And no one ever dared to look into the deep, dark waters that hid beneath the swirling blue, calm ripples at the surface.

Some days, it’s a routine he barely gives half a mind to. He’s used to being this person every day. To live by the motto “Fake it ‘til you make it.”. Except, some days he keeps asking himself if he’ll make it. And on those days, it feels suffocating to pretend his insecurities aren’t there. It’s sickening to smile at people who don’t know him and think they do. It gives him headaches just listening to chatter and he startles at loud sounds and tries not to flinch away from touch.

On those hellish days, he pushes himself to an entirely new level. Trying to suppress the fears eating at him, he goes for broke. Because if you’re going to hit, hit it ‘til it breaks. He hits serve after serve, until he can’t feel the palms of his hands aside from the tingling and sharp present pain. He jumps until his legs give out from under him and the sweat rolls of off his skin like tears but he’d never cry on such a public space. He swears his heart will give up this time from how quickly it beats, how he feels it in the blood rush quacking in his ears, booming in his chest, rising from his fingertips.

Ten minutes pass and he is still laying on the gym floor, volleyballs thrown all over the place, surrounding him. He thinks he has to get up, change clothes, go home, take a shower, sleep, stop thinking, act, better himself, be who he wants to be even though he still feels lost on who that actually is. He feels hollow and exhausted, drained of energy.

He hears footsteps coming closer and terror sips into him. Someone is going to see him like this. He needs to get up right now. He can’t. His muscles don’t want to listen to his brain. He has worked himself to hard and now, now someone will see and they will shame him and judge him and-

“Tooru.”

_Hajime_.

 

"If my heart should dimly burn  
And if my feet should fail to run  
Call my name and I will come right back to You."

 

            Tooru looks at Hajime with pleading eyes. _Please, don’t say anything. Please, I can’t hear this from you. Please, just help me. Please._

            Hajime helps him sit and holds him in place. Then, tentatively, helps him stand. Tooru’s legs are unsteady, to say the least. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to take one step without collapsing. Every matchstick inside holding him up his about to break and set him on fire. He’s going to burn.

            Hajime tightens his embrace and then picks Tooru up. Tooru doesn’t say anything. This is between them and he knows Hajime would never betray what they have, their secrets and silences, every hidden thing they let slip to each other but never to anyone else. When they get to the club room, Hajime puts him down on the floor, as carefully as he can manage, and Tooru leans against the wall behind him, unable to support himself.

            What happens next, he blames entirely on how Hajime phrases the question in the right timing, when his mental defenses were a word away from collapsing in on themselves. Inside, it felt like rubber bands setting off for his heart at full force, pins and needles sticking to his walls, and finally, a sharp tear on the veil of his armor.

“Why do you put yourself through this?”

Tooru immediately crashes down. Icarus fell into the ocean but Tooru doesn’t sink. He simply collides with a hard surface. His breath is taken away so quickly that when the tears begin to fall he feels like his lungs will fail him and his throat will close and he will choke to death with the force of it all.

Hajime has a hand on his arm, even though he can’t register any of his surrounding right now, blinded by the hotness of his tears and how it makes him feel deaf even though his head hurts with how loud he’s screaming. Inside or outside, he can’t tell.

The other boy tries to give him space to breath and he doesn’t know what to do. He clutches at Hajime until his fingers are digging into skin and there are no complaints for it. Just a calm voice trying to soothe him, even if it had a thick underline of panic.

Hajime rubbed at his back slowly and with his free hand reached for a water bottle. He didn’t try to push it on Tooru, just waited for the weeping to subside. Inside, it felt like someone was gripping his heart like a stress ball. He had never seen anyone in such grieve, and of all people it had to be Tooru.

Tooru who had a soft smile when he let him see the real one. Tooru who was a klutz at cooking but made him cookies when he was upset, nonetheless. Tooru who came by his house every day when he was sick to bring him chicken soup and watch cat videos with him in bed. Tooru who was kind. Tooru who cared about others and yet seemed to have no sense of how much he was worth.

And now, Tooru was breaking in front of him, viciously, like glass windows after a bombing. He schooled himself, told himself, _play your part, support him, there is nothing else you can do but hold his hand and reassure him you’re there, but for now…just keep quiet, and hold him._

Time is a malleable thing. It slowed and stopped and quickened, like heart beats do, but in a much more intricate manner. In this moment, time was as still as photographs and any sound heard was distressful. Tooru still cried, buried in Hajime’s chest, but it was getting quieter, his grip lessening in strength, his emotions wrung dry.

Hajime placed a hand on Tooru’s forehead and felt the heat, the hurt like fever, burning through Tooru furiously. He kept silent. He wouldn’t break Tooru out of this state until he knew what had caused it. He needed to know if he wanted to fix it. _No_ , he told himself, _in order to be there for him. He would hate if I were to look at him with pity and it wouldn’t be fair. I just want him to be okay. I just want him to see what I see._

Tooru, for all that he had gone through inside, was feeling disoriented and worn out. But he found that he couldn’t keep this any longer, spreading like poison ivy in his mind, making him be someone he wasn’t for the sake of other people like it was them he had to make happy. He found his voice, almost unrecognizable and tiny, and spoke for Hajime, not hoping the other would understand but glad he would listen.

“I’m not enough.” Tooru started, his voice rough and weak, his eyes burning, every thought trying to push through and bubble out and him trying to sort them out in a way that made sense.

Hajime bit his tongue, he couldn’t interrupt. Not now. He just needed to listen.

“I- I try so hard because I don’t want to be second to no one. But there will always be someone that out does me. And I- I hate that.” Tobio came to mind, his talented and genius like self was enough to enrage Tooru. Just because Tobio had been born with natural talent, didn’t mean someone like that could surpass him. But if Tobio put in the effort then that was exactly what it meant, which only added to his grief and envy. His teeth clenched and he had to consciously calm himself down.

“Everyone has the wrong idea of me and I… Hajime,” Tooru looked up at him for the first time in the past twenty minutes, and as they locked eyes, another tear rolled down Tooru’s face. “I am so scared.”

“I am scared that no one will love me for who I am because they don’t even know who that person is and I know everyone thinks I’m so good at making friends but really I could count my real friends with the fingers in my right hand and Hajime, you’re so important to me and you’re the only one who really listens or knows me and I’m so sorry for what I put you through.” At this point Tooru was out of breath and tears fell from his chin to wet the ground he was sitting on, yet again, but he didn’t stop or choke on the words. They just flowed and showed him the way.

“I haven’t figured out how to love myself yet, and it’s not like I don’t see my qualities because I do. I know I’m good and I try so hard but I’m also conscious of every little flaw that makes me a bad person and…do you think I’m a bad person? Because I’m always so terrified that one day you’ll realize I am and will run, and avoid me and-”

Tooru felt himself being pulled into a tight embrace. Hajime had a knot in his throat and tears were welling up in the brim of his eyes and falling the second he blinked.

“Don’t even say that again, please. Tooru, I love you so much and I see you in a way you can’t even imagine but I want you to. I want you to see the way you’re always framed by light when I look at you. How even when you’re being annoying and bratty, my affection for you doesn’t even hesitate or stop, it grows and grows and…and grows.”

They held each other like that for a while, they spoke their feelings like they hadn’t ever done before and now, it just felt like uncovering another layer of the person that’s been by our side for years and counting.

 

"I spoke up and I spoke out  
I learned that love doesn't hold its tongue  
And passion doesn't bow to what they think."

 

 

This night had been a meaningful mark in their relationship.

For Tooru, an establishment of limits, because if he ever did this to himself again, Hajime warned, there would be hell to pay. For Hajime, it helped him understand Tooru better, in a darker and hidden way he was aware of but unused to see bared like that. That night strengthened their bond. The red string of fate tightened and tangled and made sure their paths wouldn’t stray from one another. This was the other half they needed to reach full potential with an added bonus, a reassuring supporting beam, someone who would witness the way they grew and changed and became.

And the last thing Hajime said to Tooru that night, when he dropped him off on his doorstep, was a set of words Tooru would find burned into his insides for the rest of their lives.

_Whoever you become in the future, I just want you to know, I’m already proud of you._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics by Steffany Frizzell-Gretzinger.


End file.
